Neale Coleman, the veteran Olympics adviser to Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson, has been made CBE for services to the Games.

It was unkindly suggested by onlookers at Buckingham Palace that the Arsenal season-ticket holder’s medal was one more than his beloved team had won in the past seven years.

Amid a roll-call of British Olympic greats receiving honours at Buckingham Palace yesterday were several unsung heroes of the Games, such as Chris Townsend.

The commercial director of Locog, who masterminded the raising of £2 billion in sponsor revenues towards the cost of the Games, was rewarded with an OBE which he received from the Queen.

“It was the proudest day of my life after my wedding — and a lot less stressful,” said Townsend.

* WPP’s advertising agency Y&R has acquired a majority stake in Turkish creative digital firm CS Reklam Hizmetleri Sanayi Ve Ticaret A, which trades under the name “C-Section”. Good name, although presumably the Turks did not intend for it to prompt thoughts about a Caesarean section.

Mutual support for probe into HBOS...

While the reputation of banks is still on the floor, building societies and mutuals are held in higher esteem. The Commons Treasury Select Committee has announced that it has appointed Stuart Bernau, former chairman and chief executive of the Chelsea Building Society, and Iain Cornish, former chief executive of the Yorkshire Building Society, to review the report the Financial Services Authority is preparing on the failure of HBOS. Former Treasury mandarin Sir Nicholas Monck will work alongside them. The irony about the collapse of HBOS is that Halifax used to be a very decent building society before it floated on the stock market and got into bed with Bank of Scotland.

* “Great ideas come from great conversations,” says a message on the home page of RBS’s personal banking website. “Give us feedback on how we can make your bank better for 2013.” The site publishes plenty of suggestions from its customers – among them ideas for mobile banking apps and improved phone services. But strangely there is nothing about cutting annual bonuses of £607 million after posting a £5.2 billion loss.

* Accendo Markets’ trader Marc Kimsey doesn’t mince his words over RBS’s £5.2 billion loss. His scatological take on the results, entitled “you can roll it in glitter”, said it all.

...as the blue touchpaper is lit

Sounds like the Treasury Select Committee is looking for fireworks from that FSA report into the HBOS collapse, especially after the MPs had to fight to get an earlier report into the failure of RBS into the public domain. “The FSA’s previous report into RBS laid bare serious failures within RBS and at the regulator,” declares Select Committee chairman Andrew Tyrie. “Without persistent pressure from the Treasury Committee, that report would never have been produced; Parliament and the public would have been none the wiser. Unless regulators are frank about what went wrong last time, there will be little chance of avoiding a repetition in the future.” His warning ought to jangle a few nerves among former FSA types, especially as one-time deputy chairman Sir James Crosby’s previous job was, er, chief executive of HBOS in the boom years.